Last week, Breitbart News reported on Anna Makanju, Facebook’s global policy manager for content regulation, who advised Joe Biden on Ukraine policy during his time as vice president. But Makanju — and Facebook’s — connections to not only Ukraine, but the energy giant Burisma, go even deeper than that.
Testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed ignorance, telling Sen. John Thune (R-SD he wasn’t aware that Makanju, a senior employee in his content regulation apparatus was a former top Biden adviser.
As a policy manager for content regulation, Makanju was in a position to influence Facebook’s decision to censor the New York Post’s bombshell reporting about the Biden family’s ties to Ukraine and Burisma. The conflict of interest is clear: Makanju is herself intimately involved in the same web that connects Burisma, Ukraine, the Bidens, and Facebook.
One of Facebook’s most consequential partnerships is with the Atlantic Council, a highly influential foreign policy think tank that the tech giant partnered with in 2018 to “monitor for misinformation” and “protect free and fair elections across the world.” Makanju, in addition to her work for Facebook, is a senior fellow with the organization.
The Atlantic Council — which is tied to Burisma.
The think tank signed a cooperative agreement with the Ukrainian company in 2017, while Hunter Biden was still on the company’s board. The Atlantic Council and Burisma would go on to organize international energy conferences together, one of which featured Hunter Biden as a speaker.
As of 2019, Burisma had given more than $450,000 in donations to the Atlantic Council.
In 2016, before the donations started, the think tank harshly criticized Ukrainian oligarchs over corruption, including Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky. In the words of one Atlantic Council report, Zlochevsky hired “trophy foreigners” like Hunter Biden to help bolster his company’s reputation, while engaging in financial and political corruption.
Just a year later, the Atlantic Council partnered with the same company whose owner it had previously condemned as corrupt.
And a year after that, it partnered with Facebook to fight “misinformation” and defend “free and fair elections.” Its senior fellow, Makanju, works for Facebook in the same area — regulating content and controlling “misinformation.”
Makanju was so close of an adviser to Biden on Ukraine policy that she was on the former Vice President’s now-infamous phonecalls with President Poroshenko, and later argued that transcripts of the calls shouldn’t be released to the public.
So, to recap:
Facebook suppressed a bombshell New York Post story about the Biden family’s ties to Ukraine and Burisma, backed by photo evidence and testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business partner. The Biden campaign has yet to dispute any of the specific allegations in the Post’s stories.
Facebook acted with uncharacteristic swiftness to suppress the Post, failing to wait for the verdict of its third-party “fact checkers” before taking action. The act drew rare condemnation from the Poynter Institute, a normally left-leaning journalism institute that “certifies” Big Tech’s third-party fact checkers.
The AP offered potential “misinformation” as justification for Facebook’s action, even though no credible source has claimed the Post’s story is untrue.
Facebook, meanwhile, works with the Atlantic Council to combat so-called “misinformation,” going so far as to make one of the think-tank’s senior fellows, Makanju, its global policy manager for content regulation.
The Atlantic Council, meanwhile, has financial ties to Burisma, the same company at the heart of the Biden-Ukraine corruption allegations.
Relying on Burisma for hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, the Atlantic Council now has a vested interest in the energy company’s success. This means it has a vested interest in suppressing the Post’s story, which further highlights the same allegations of corruption about Burisma that the Atlantic Council itself once wrote about.
And its fellow, Facebook’s Makanju also has a vested interest in suppressing the Post’s story — it involves her former boss, and it’s connected to phonecalls between Biden and Poroshenko that she herself was allowed to listen in on.
Given the facts, it seems impossible to see Facebook’s sprawling “content regulation” and “misinformation” apparatus as anything other than hopelessly compromised.
Facebook has not replied to a Breitbart News’ request for comment.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His new book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which contains exclusive interviews with sources inside Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, is currently available for purchase.
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